The Twentieth Man

by Tony Jones

  ‘I agree,’ said Sharp. ‘And the most worrying thing is that they’ve had weeks to develop those plans.’

  ‘So we have to move fast,’ said Harper, reeling off the orders he’d been compiling. ‘The first job is yours, Al. I want you to work up a new threat assessment on the Bijedic visit. Pull in Wally Price and whoever else you need from the team.

  ‘I want whatever you can pull together on the three plotters. I want them all under strict 24-hour surveillance as of now. Run this codename “cicada” past everyone. See if it rings any bells.

  ‘And Al, I need all this done in the next few hours. That’s all the time I can give you. When the threat assessment is done, I’ll take it directly to the commissioner. It’ll be up to him to alert the government. We’ve either got to get on top of this now or stop Bijedic from coming here.’

  Sharp hesitated. ‘I can do that, boss, but how do we describe the source of this intelligence? Kelly almost had a rebellion when he told his team he was giving us the transcript. Some of them were ready to sit on this, just to protect their arses. I got to know Jim pretty well. He’s trusting me.’

  ‘They’re worried about the attorney-general?’

  ‘In a nutshell. Kelly says that under no circumstances are we to let Lionel Murphy know that this came from a listening device. They know Murphy’s got a big stick up his arse about that. He’ll demand to know who approved the warrants, and we know that no one did.’

  ‘Kelly’s right to be worried,’ said Harper thoughtfully. ‘Murphy sees the state police forces as the enemy. They’ve been wiretapping him and his mates for decades, and he knows it. So … yes, it’s tricky.’

  ‘How do you want me to play this?’ Sharp asked.

  ‘This is all going to end up on Murphy’s desk,’ said Harper. ‘Best you don’t go into the legal question in the Threat Assessment. Anyway, bugging a room is not the same as an illegal wiretap. Tainted or not, we’ve got credible intelligence of an assassination plot. It’d be criminal not to act on it.’

  ‘What will you tell the commissioner?’

  ‘Everything. He needs to know.’

  ‘He’s a mate of Murphy’s, isn’t he?’

  ‘They studied law together a thousand years ago. I don’t believe he’s in Murphy’s pocket. Anyway, we need his backing. This is going to be a huge operation.’

  21.

  14 March 1973

  Marin Katich sat, stripped to the waist, on a delicate little bench in front of a dressing table, an incongruous figure even to his own eyes. A line of high-wattage globes above the mirror, as one might find in an actor’s dressing-room, illuminated the landscape of his torso, coloured in fading shades of green, blue, purple and mauve, as variegated as live coral. Three weeks after the beating he’d taken at Khandalah, he was now slowly healing.

  He surveyed his arms and upper body, which had been covered in multiple contusions, welts, lacerations and scratches. He probed at the two fractured ribs, wincing at the sharp pain. They were, miraculously, the only broken bones; he would strap them back up before he left the house. All that damage he could cover up with clothes.

  The real problem was his face. At least the swelling had subsided. He consulted the written instructions that had been left for him before applying foundation cream to conceal the discolouration. As he stared into the mirror he had the odd sense of sitting in front of a stranger, and he scowled, bearing his teeth, to make sure the reflection followed suit.

  He picked up a powder puff and examined the delicate object with a grim smile, turning it over and over in his fingers, before applying a layer of powder to his face. Each time he closed his eyes his mind threw up flash frames, a gruesome slideshow of the explosion of violence on the river.

  Faint with pain and exhaustion in its aftermath, he had wanted to sink into the warm sand on the riverbank and sleep, but he knew he had to stay on his feet. The Yugoslavs would inevitably send others to find out what had happened to their team. It was no longer an option to remain at Khandalah.

  He dragged Bob’s body across the sand and hid it in thick brush. Then he rinsed his filthy clothes, put them on wet and motored back upstream. At the main house he used a razorblade to make incisions in the lumps around his eyes and drained blood away to reduce the swelling. He washed his wounds and poured iodine into them, clenching his teeth at the acid burn. He took codeine for the pain and benzedrine to keep himself going.

  It was dark when he returned to the river, but he managed to locate the two bodies. He wrapped the corpses in old tarps, weighted them with rocks and tied them into tight packages with rope and steel chains. He hauled his burdens into the tinny and motored downstream in the moonlight to Twofold Bay.

  The bay was calm. He pushed on out as far as he dared into the steady swell of the ocean and then rolled the bodies over the side without ceremony.

  Marin heard a noise outside. He moved stiffly to the window and pulled down a slat in the venetian blinds. Outside was a neat patch of lawn, a well-tended garden with a few shade trees. Beyond the trees was a typically quiet suburban Canberra street. It was a sunny morning, a few scattered clouds in a blue sky. A dog was barking. Birds twittered politely.

  He let go of the blinds and backed away from the window. He went into the pink-tiled ensuite bathroom, emptied his bladder and bent to scrutinise the bowl. He had passed blood from his bruised kidneys for weeks, but his urine was clear now.

  He went to the kitchen and made himself a bowl of Rice Bubbles. He poured milk from a bottle so cold it sweated with condensation. As he began to eat, the cereal box sat in front of him like a frozen TV screen. He stared at the clownish elves—Snap, Crackle and Pop—until a rush of memories stopped his spoon mid-air:

  Petar in his school uniform, ear to the bowl, listening for the promised sounds … Their mother moving towards Marin with the milk bottle, straight from the fridge as he always demanded … There was a dark smudge around one of her eyes … The shadow of his father behind her …

  Marin pushed the bowl aside and brushed tears from his cheeks. He busied himself making a pot of coffee and set it above a low flame on the stove. While the water heated, he walked into the dining room. His rifle and cleaning gear sat on the long table. He had spread out an old newspaper beneath it to protect the lacquered surface. He had kept the paper’s front page separate; he now picked it up and reread the main story, with its startling headline and equally surprising by-line.

  Friday March 2 1973, the Herald

  Ustasha’s World HQ in Australia

  Murphy to tell Senate

  From ANNA ROSEN, our Security Correspondent.

  Canberra – Australia is the world headquarters of Croatian terrorism, according to the Attorney-General, Senator Murphy. Senator Murphy will table documents seized by Commonwealth Police revealing evidence of Croatian extremists training in Australia before being sent to Yugoslavia as guerrilla fighters. The documents are part of a statement on Croatian terrorism the attorney-general is planning to make in the Senate next week. He will also claim that the extremists have been engaged in intimidation, terrorism and other acts of violence against other Yugoslavs in Australia …

  Anna was here in Canberra—perhaps only a few miles away! Security correspondent? How strange.

  Marin knew that Murphy had targeted his father. So had Anna, for that matter. What did she know? Had she been drawn here to witness his final act? Perhaps she was here to talk to his conscience, to remind him of what he was and what he might have been. He had often thought about how he would explain himself to her. Anna was bound into his fate in ways she would never know.

  As Marin had come to understand it, fate existed beyond individual will. It was remorseless and it was random. It allowed some lucky people just to pass by; but others were seized by its talons and never let loose. He was sure now—absolutely sure—that his own choices were dictated by forces beyond his control. He had once thought himself free as a bird, but, as the meanest Croatian peasant could tel
l you, there is a hawk above every bird.

  Marin took his coffee into the backyard, sat at the round wrought-iron table and smoked a cigarette. The hot sun felt good on his bare chest. He took out a map of the city and looked again at the locations he had marked. There was one, in particular, that he was keen to visit. If he was right, it was a potential firing platform fifty metres high. He calculated it was about nine hundred metres from the target; beyond the safe range, they would imagine.

  He leaned back and closed his eyes. The sun’s burning disc was imprinted on his eyelids. He thought of days on the beach with Petar, when the only thing you’d had to think about was how hot you had to be before you ran down and threw yourself back into the waves. He dozed off for a moment and, when he opened his eyes, Petar was gone.

  He went inside, bound up his fractured ribs and got dressed. He put on sunglasses and a floppy hat and checked himself in the mirror. He went back to the dining room and covered the rifle with a blanket. He picked up the car keys, pocketed the small camera and a handful of cottonwool balls, took the binoculars in their brown leather case and left the house, closing the door quietly.

  22.

  Daphne Newman looked up at the sepulchral figures of the two spymasters sitting across from her as they waited for Lionel Murphy.

  The older one had angular spectacles, and wavy Brylcreemed hair swept up from a razor-sharp parting. She thought he had the guileful face of a private school headmaster who took secret pleasure in corporal punishment. He was Peter Barbour, director-general of ASIO, and he was preoccupied with reading a sheaf of documents in his lap. Perhaps they were surveillance reports on all the Soviet agents of influence who now occupied prominent roles in the Federal Cabinet. That would certainly explain the waves of hostility that radiated from him, even as he was doing something as innocuous as reading.

  The other was a tall, thin, balding fellow, who she imagined as a master at the same school, perhaps an Ancient History teacher or a disgruntled chaplain too fond of the boys. He was in fact John C. Elliott, assistant director-general ‘B’. Daphne wanted to ask him what the ‘B’ stood for, but she suspected it might have been a state secret. She had caught Elliott staring at her when she was typing and intuited that he was reminding himself of the details of her connection to Ivan Stenin. Such a pity Ivan turned out to be KGB, but there was never anything creepy about him. Not like these fellows.

  She looked at the clock on her desk. Oh dear, Murphy was already five minutes late. Elliott looked at his watch and whispered something to the director-general. Barbour glanced up and caught her eye. His look gave away nothing. Then he went back to reading.

  She felt like blurting out to them that Ivan Sergeevich had been a funny, decent man, not the type to go around assassinating Soviet defectors. She remembered the pain she’d felt when Murphy had gently explained to her that ASIO believed Stenin had been tasked with finding where they’d hidden away the Petrovs.

  Why was Lionel always late? She wondered if she should offer again to make them a cup of tea.

  The attorney-general had in fact been delayed at a state luncheon hosted by the prime minister in honour of His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, who was on a brief visit to the country. By the time Negus managed to extract his boss from this slightly bizarre event, Murphy was fifteen minutes late for the ASIO meeting and somewhat over the legal limit.

  Having rushed him back to the office, Negus was gratified to find the two spies were still waiting. But he did feel a metaphorical chill coming off them, as frosty as the Cold War. Lionel Murphy, completely unabashed and seemingly unaware of their discomfort, greeted them both warmly.

  ‘Director, good to see you again.’ He pumped Barbour’s hand, nodded to Elliott and led them to his office. ‘I’m so glad you waited. Come in. Can we get you a cup of tea? My apologies for being so late. I blame the royal prerogative. The lunch for Prince Philip dragged on and on, and I’m told that it’s bad form to walk out on a Royal Highness, even if he is a mere consort. George, please join us. What about that tea, Peter?’

  ‘No, thank you, Attorney,’ said the director-general. ‘We’re fine.’

  Murphy dropped heavily into the seat behind his big cedar desk.

  ‘Sit, sit,’ he told his guests. ‘George, you’ll take notes, will you, since Maureen is not here? So, gentlemen, are you confident we can guarantee the safety of Prime Minister Bijedic during his visit?’

  Peter Barbour nodded. ‘Since we met a week ago, the twelve phone intercepts you agreed to on key Croatian targets are now active. Translators are going through the large volume of product as quickly as they can. There’s nothing significant to report yet. Meanwhile, I have tasked the deputy director-general, Jack Behm, to coordinate with the Commonwealth Police and draw up an agreed plan for Bijedic’s protection. I’ve also instructed him that, if the security authorities don’t believe he can be adequately protected, we will advise the government to call off the visit.’

  Murphy groaned at the last statement. ‘That would be an extraordinary admission of incompetence, would it not? Can you imagine telling the Yugoslavs we are not capable of protecting their prime minister?’

  Barbour straightened his glasses and glared at Murphy. ‘I did stress to you at our last meeting that there is a high degree of risk attached to the visit.’

  ‘And yet, Director, this “high degree of risk” is coming from a source whose existence the former attorney-general at various times denied or simply ignored. It makes me wonder what advice you were giving him about this threat for all those years.’

  Barbour’s indignation was evident on his face and in his every movement. Murphy’s truculent tone had taken him by surprise. He began to wonder if the man was a little drunk. He decided to placate him. ‘I can, of course, provide you with that advice, Attorney.’

  Murphy looked over to Negus, as if to confirm that he had noted this undertaking in his minutes. When he turned back to Barbour, the director saw that the last vestiges of the man’s bonhomie had evaporated.

  ‘Indeed you will,’ said Murphy. ‘In fact I direct you to do so and I want to see all the information ASIO has gathered on Croatian terrorist organisations in this country. I have promised to make a complete statement to the Senate on this issue and I want no stone left unturned.’

  ‘I have brought Mr Elliott here to meet you for that purpose,’ said Barbour, with a gesture to his balding companion. ‘He is assistant director-general for research and analysis. His Branch “B” holds most of the relevant material and he will be tasked with putting it together for you.’

  Murphy turned to the unprepossessing man next to Barbour.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Mr Elliott, when you are gathering this material, I want you to include everything you have on ASIO’s own association with these Croatian extremists.’

  Elliott looked puzzled. ‘Could you elucidate further on what you mean by “association”?’

  ‘My meaning is perfectly clear, Mr Elliott. I want to see any documents that relate to ASIO’s association with individual Croatian extremists. Is that enough elucidation for you?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I believe so.’

  Murphy turned back to the ASIO boss. ‘As we are now perilously close to what you agree is a perilous visit by Prime Minister Bijedic, I require this material to be ready by this weekend. Is that clear?’

  ‘That is quite clear,’ said Barbour. Even as he spoke, loud bells began to ring through the hallway, indicating a division in the Senate. ‘The material will be made ready for you this Friday afternoon.’

  Lionel Murphy stood and came around from behind his desk.

  ‘I am required in the Senate, as you can hear,’ he said. ‘Thank you, gentlemen. There are other problems to discuss, but they will have to wait for another time.’

  Negus stood and opened the door for the visitors. Barbour went first, but as Elliott made to leave Murphy took his arm.

  ‘Mr Elliott,’ he said. ‘You should think long and ha
rd about giving me a nil return.’

  ‘A nil return on what, Senator?’

  ‘On the documents relating to ASIO’s association with Croatians.’

  23.

  The high tower of the carillon, perched on the edge of Lake Burley Griffin, seemed to Marin like a modernist minaret. He looked at his watch as he climbed out of the car. It was almost midday. He sat on the bonnet and waited for the second hand to sweep around to 12. Moments later the automatic mechanism, fifty metres up in the bell chamber, played the Westminster chimes before the hour-strike hammer was activated to hit the bourdon bell twelve times in imitation of Big Ben.

  Marin had spent the morning at the National Library, learning everything he could about the carillon. That had been easy enough, since no one had ever considered the structure as anything more than a remarkable musical instrument, built into one of the country’s finest examples of late twentieth-century Brutalist Architecture.

  Marin had smiled grimly when he read the description. No doubt, if his mission succeeded, most people would consider him to be an example of a late twentieth-century brute. Not fine, of course, but capable of looking at this structure as no one else ever had, or so he assumed—through the eyes of a sniper.

  It was a matter of national pride that every aspect of the carillon’s design should be freely available to the public. After all, a West Australian firm, Cameron, Chisholm & Nicol, had beaten off more fancied British architects to win the international design competition to build it. From their blueprints, he had been able to make copies of the detailed architectural plans. They showed, in multiple cross-sections, every access door and lift shaft, every emergency stairwell, and every nook and cranny in the structure. Moreover, the National Capital Development Commission had published management plans for the carillon, which included everything from the design philosophy to the maintenance routines.